There on one stage on Wednesday night, we had a performance so sublime as to remind you that there’s a reason this show is still on the air after 12 seasons, as well as one so awful it reminded you of the show’s most lamentable tendencies.

Candice Glover gave the sublime performance and if she’s not in the top three on Thursday night, then shame on you, America.

Lazaro Arbos gave the awful one. If Candice’s song was caviar, Lazaro’s was fish guts.

Let me speak directly to all you Lazaro lovers out there. Yes, he’s very handsome; yes, he’s likeable; yes, his stuttering has made him an inspiration to many people, but it’s time to let him go home.

Allowing him be outclassed by the girls and dumped on by the judges every week is not doing him or the show any favours. More than in any previous season, this is not the year to let the cute boy win.

On Wednesday, the top six sang two songs each: one by Burt Bacharach and Hal David (oh good, another theme night in which the songs are older than the contestants) and one they wished they had written.

Candice topped both rounds, in my opinion; Lazaro was at the bottom.

Other notable things that happened: Mariah Carey, saying she’d been reprimanded by her Idol bosses for being too nice, gave some genuine feedback; we learned that there may or may not be a romance brewing between Amber Holcomb and eliminated contestant Burnell Taylor; and Kree Harrison wore a dress.

Now back to the singing. Here’s how I ranked the performances.

Round 1, Bacharach-David songs

Candice Glover: I don’t think the tone of Candice’s voice has ever sounded better than it did Wednesday night. It elevated the first words of “Don’t Make Me Over” into something enchanting and Candice built from there with flawless runs, the prettiest vibrato and spot-on falsetto. By the time she belted out the line “Accept me for what I am,” you had no choice but to do exactly that. After the first of her standing ovations from the judges (only Carey stayed seated), Nicki Minaj said she wanted to have a “women’s revival in here ... When you can do that ... that means this is what you were born to do.”

Amber Holcomb: It’s just Amber’s luck that the night she has a great performance of her own she gets overshadowed by Candice. Nonetheless, “I Say a Little Prayer” suited Amber’s voice perfectly and there was a wonderful energy, almost a playfulness, to the performance. Keith Urban described it as “this summer breeze (that) just blew in. It never let me go the whole time.” And Minaj said Amber had been able to focus and get comfortable without her “boyfriend” around. Ryan Seacrest later clarified that Minaj was referring to Burnell and showed footage of Burnell kissing Amber on the cheek during his farewell song last week. Confronted, Amber said, “We’re really good friends, we’re getting to know each other before anything else,” which sounded like a definite maybe to me.

Kree Harrison: It was a great choice to have Kree start “What the World Needs Now Is Love” a cappella because it highlighted the beauty of her voice. The emotion of Kree’s songs may not be overt – as Carey noted, “I don’t need you to make faces or go overboard”—but I concur with Urban that humanity and compassion come through when Kree sings.

Angie Miller: Speaking of making faces, Angie’s take on “Anyone Who Had a Heart” was a little performance by the numbers. The vocal was very good, but there was a sense throughout of “Now, I’m going to look into the camera; now I’m going to move my arm up and down; now I’m going to sing louder.” Carey said it sometimes feels like Angie focuses on pronunciation instead of just singing the song. And Urban said the ease with which Angie hits high notes sometimes comes “at the expense of passion.”

Janelle Arthur: If Lazaro’s fans insist on keeping him around one more week, then I think Janelle’s a goner. Her “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” was mediocre. The vocal was meh and the strolling around the stage, smiling into the camera and singing to Urban made the performance cheesy and loungey. There’s a prettiness to Janelle’s voice when she’s fully immersed in a song, but we heard just a tiny bit of that at the very end of this number. Minaj called it boring and Randy Jackson called it lacklustre.

Lazaro Arbos: The good news is that Lazaro remembered the words to “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” The bad news is that he gave what is possibly the worst top six performance ever. If starting out in a too-low key, pronounced shakiness on the sustained notes and a vibrato that sounded forced wasn’t bad enough, Lazaro missed the key change partway through the song. Jackson spoke the cold hard truth when he called the performance horrible. “I felt like we were sitting back in the auditions in some city and we were about to say ‘OK, no, next,’” Jackson said.

Round 2, songs they wish they wrote

Candice: Candice chose The Cure’s “Lovesong” and she was astonishing. Words can’t adequately describe what Candice did with that song, the way she bent notes, dipped and soared, softened parts, intensified others. If I were you, I’d just watch the video, over and over and over again, which is what I’ve been doing. Even Carey got to her feet for this one along with the other judges; Urban got on the ground and did the “We’re not worthy” bow; Carey marched onstage and threw a handful of glitter on Candice; the audience roared and kept on roaring, drowning out any chance of judges’ comments; tears rolled down Candice’s cheeks. All Jackson managed to say was, “Let me just say on behalf of all my judges up here, one of the greatest performances in the history, 12 years, of American Idol, right there.” Amen to that.

Kree: The combination of Kree’s voice—with its slight twang, its clarity of tone, its delicate vibrato – and marvellous musical backup from a guitarist, violinist and pedal steel guitarist made this a lovely, yearning version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” And dare I say it was nice to see the very pretty Kree in a dress for once. Urban said, “You’re everything beautiful and pure about country music and, in the midst of all the pop country going on, you’re one of the artists that when you sing like that ... everybody goes, ‘Oh, that’s right: real country music, that’s why we love it.’”

Angie: Angie was back where the judges have been urging her to go for weeks, behind a piano, and turns out they gave her good advice. The first verse of “Love Came Down” by Kari Jobe was particularly lovely. If I wanted to nitpick I’d say the chorus got a bit strident, but at least there was passion in the performance. The judges were pleased, but Minaj had some stern words of advice: “This is the only time when you are gonna be remembered at the top of the pack and I don’t know why you want to run away from it ... This is what people began to vote for when we were in Vegas and I don’t know why you want to stray from it ... That’s the only time you’re going to win.”

Janelle: Janelle, seated on a step, sounded more like her reliable self on the opening verse of Garth Brook’s “The Dance,” although the song suffered when she stood up and started pushing the vocal. You could at least tell the song meant something to her. Minaj said Janelle stepped it up vocally, but “if I’m being completely honest I still don’t think that was enough to get a leg up over the other girls tonight.”

Amber: For all the complaints about how Amber never does anything uptempo, I felt her vocal suffered with all the moving around in Beyonce’s “Love on Top.” And though Amber sings very well, she’s no Beyonce. The judges liked it, but Carey acknowledged that it wasn’t her favourite vocal.

Lazaro: On the chorus of “Angels” by Robbie Williams, Lazaro sounded briefly like the singer everybody fell in love with earlier in the competition. His voice was strong, he looked confident, his vibrato was sweet. But the rest of the song was underwhelming, albeit better than his first go-round. The judges acknowledged it was slightly better, but Urban said, “We’re getting to that point now we’re finding the difference between the ones who seem like they’re in some sort of talent quest and the ones who are really artists and they’re in this to make a career.”

Thursday night, at 8 p.m. on CTV Two, we’ll find out whether the sympathy vote, perhaps fuelled by outrage over the judges’ harsh comments, has propelled Lazaro back into the top three and whether a girl will fall as a result. If it’s Janelle, don’t expect a judges’ save.

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